Moonshine
by caribou.and.cake
Summary: The city was now the storybook cursed forest and I was little Red Riding Hood, a human surrounded by a ravenous pack of Big Bad Wolves, one of which I was thoroughly, completely, and devastatingly in love with. GrimmIchi for ebjeebies
1. Kill All Your Darlings

Summary: The city was now the storybook cursed forest and I was little Red Riding Hood, a human surrounded by a ravenous pack of Big Bad Wolves, one of which I was thoroughly, completely, and devastatingly in love with. GrimmIchi for ebjeebies

Warnings: AU, yaoi, language, violence, mature themes, sexual content, first person.

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. The chapter title was something Ernest Hemingway said about writing prose (though I never really liked his work, he did say some very poignant things about the process of writing.) :)

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><p><strong>Moonshine <strong>

_**Kill All Your Darlings**_

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><p><em>For my dear, talented friend ebjeebies.<em>

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><p><em>It's another lonely sunset<em>

_Another starless sky_

_The nervousness inside_

_It's the final kiss from a lover's fist_

_It's the reason why you can't cry_

_And we tried to change_

_The city noise made us strange _

_So we plugged our ears and learned to fight_

_We set the stage _

_But we could not engage _

_So we cut all ties by candlelight_

_~ City Noise - Scarling_

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><p>My mother once told me the only one who would never leave you was death; he was the only constant in our mortal existence.<p>

I remember I was seven years old and behind her the sun had been shining bright like an imperial topaz in the Indian turquoise sky and despite the hopelessness darkening her entire being, her beauty exceeded it ten fold. Even though she had been sick with grief, my father's death crushing her delicate heart into fine, sparkling powder I had thought she rivaled vestal white angels with her radiance.

But in the high contrast view of reality, she had always been a fragile thing, willowy with thin wrists and narrow shoulders and forget-me-not blue veins set in moonlight pale skin.

The loss of her beloved took its costly toll on her.

And six months later was dead.

She wasn't strong enough and to me, it was a cautionary tale, a devastating omen to never be weak.

In fact, before I met _him _I was convinced I would never fall in love, simply so that I wouldn't ever again have to feel the carmine ripping agony of loss.

Of course, I was proven very, _very _wrong.

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><p>The city was forever night, an urban landscape of emptiness; skyscrapers with dark windows and abandoned, shadowy streets filled with only a shattering silence that permeated every concrete crack and flickering, fluorescent light bulb.<p>

An overly curved crescent moon hung in the ebony sky, an artificial spot of light that shone down over what had once been a bustling, living, breathing city but was now a spectral, sepia faded photograph of the past.

I remember the day the sun died, or rather I remember the day the government officials had sealed this city into a dome-like structure in an effort to quarantine it from the rest of the world. A day that would live eternally in my memories, a demoniac ghost haunting the recesses of my mind.

I had watched the sun disappear behind the tinted glass of the dome, its orange nectarine dreamsicle glow replaced by the endless night sky embedded with the never-changing waxing moon.

The sun was dead. Everything was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. And I was alone.

Alone in a plagued city perfumed with death's rotting scent, a cloying mixture of overripe fruit and funeral flowers and aged, yellowed lace eaten by moths.

Alone in a city teeming with fairytale beasts, those once bitten, changed, cursed, condemned.

Alone in a city that held all of my best memories, and all of my worst.

Completely and utterly alone.

Just like I wanted.

I was sitting on a rooftop, booted feet dangling hundred of yards above the tar and pavement, an assault rifle slung over my shoulder. I stuck my tongue out to lick at the china white paper of a handmade cigarette and folded it over. It felt good to do something so normal, so made for television.

I hadn't seen another living being for five days now. Typical. My record was sixteen.

Humming a melody of a song whose name or lyrics I couldn't recall, I lit the cigarette. The lighter's atomic tangerine fire flamed bright in the darkness but it was gone just as soon as it had appeared, its wielder vanishing back into my jacket pocket.

Cigarette drags are breaths of death, lethal exhalations.

I liked thinking of it like that, liked believing I was shaving a few years off of my monochromatic life.

I smoked for a few minutes, the leaden cloudy vapor swirling and curling in the bitter night air.

So pretty.

So ugly.

When the cigarette was down to its butt I flicked it away, into the empty void of the street below. It spiraled out of existence.

That was when I heard it, the wicked howls of the Beasts.

They echoed off of the ghost city walls. My ears bled at the sound.

I hated that sound.

_Hated _it.

But I couldn't deny that it sent electric pulses of adrenaline and a manic kind of hunger through my blood. My veins were hot with the desire to put a bullet through a few animal skulls that night.

I stood and ran across the rooftop's ledge, the assault rifle beating a rhythm on my back. Spreading my arms out as if I was on a balance beam I reached the edge and dived.

It was peace as I free fell towards the concrete pavement, the wind brushing over my face and through my hair almost like the caress of another's touch- something I hadn't felt in an eternity of ages.

The harness caught me ten feet from the ground, jerking my body like a rag doll so that my limbs twisted into the wires. For a few seconds I was a warped trapeze artist suspended in the air.

Unlocking the buckles on the harness, I dropped to the concrete on one knee.

Another howl pierced the atmosphere. It was cruel, baneful, starving, but also sort of... lonely. I had always thought there was a sadness to the Beasts, a kind of inner light, fragile and small, struggling against the overwhelming darkness.

I could identify with that.

Their howling grew closer and closer as I trekked through the empty streets. A candy wrapper fluttered in a cross breeze, its brand name too faded to read. It looked like an insect with broken wings. The saddest thing I had ever seen.

I felt their presence before I actually saw them. They oozed an aura of exquisite desolation and starvation. Their eyes were deranged, glowing, on fire, and porcelain dagger teeth were exposed in snarling sneers. An exercise in madness and hostility. Beautiful. Repulsive.

And the thing was: they looked just as they had before the bite.

That was the disease, the change.

They were animals in human skins.

Beasts.

There were ten of them, eight males and two females; unrelentlessly wild as they approached me from all sides, crouched in a slow stalk, growling, sizing me up.

I reached for my rifle, swinging it around so I could firmly grasp it, pointer finger instinctively curling around the trigger.

The first one sprang, its speed rivaling the bullet that followed its spring, ripping away half of his throat and face. I didn't even blink before reloading and taking aim at the Beast closest to me, my next pewter slug cracking into its ribcage, devouring its heart.

Merciless? Maybe.

But I liked to think it was charity. More angel of death than serial killer.

I wasn't a murderer.

...

I wasn't.

The other eight Beasts descended upon me, the proverbial pack of wolves. I cracked one of them upside the head with the rifle's threaded barrel. Scarlet sprayed and stained, droplets raining across my face.

My weapon was torn from my hands. I was naked in the presence of evil.

A single Beast had the strength of a dozen jungle cats. I had naught but my own human musculature.

Otherwise known as _not enough_.

Claws gripped my right arm. I heard the snap before I felt it, my bone breaking in the Beast's hands like a dry, winter twig. I couldn't stop the agonized moan that slipped from between my lips. It grew into a tortured, hoarse scream as the Beast smirked cruelly and twisted the limb.

They were holding me down now, body flush with the black tar street.

A male leaned over me, dark hair overgrown and green eyes phosphorescently feral. Perhaps he had once been a lawyer. Or a car salesman.

I struggled to get away.

I knew what they wanted, it was always the same.

It was the nature of the Beasts.

They didn't want to rend your flesh or grind your bones for their bread or whatever storybook authors would have you believe.

They wanted to make you one of _them_.

A fate worse than death by miles and seas and continents and universes.

I saw the saliva dripping off of his fangs, eyes wide and choked, gasping wordless protests spilling off of my tongue.

Terror was my lover in that moment, wrapping me tight in its embrace, suffocating and drowning me in its blistering blanket of fright.

Teeth clamped down at the place where my throat met my shoulder and I truly screamed then.

It burned.

It felt like the fires of Hell made up my blood cells, like I'd had an intravenous transfusion of boiling hot lava, like I was roasting from the inside out. Surely I was nothing more than a pile of charred bones and ashes by now.

I was vaguely aware of snarls and canine-like whimpers of pain above me, of hands leaving me, but my eyes were screwed shut and I saw nothing.

That is, until I felt myself being lifted, cradled like a child in strong arms.

Eyelashes fluttering open, I stared into a kaleidoscopic abyss of blue.

I wondered if it was the world beyond, the serenity of death, but I knew it couldn't be when I still felt like a witch at the stake.

Something pierced the wound the Beast's fangs had left, the pain intensifying to unimaginable levels.

I was shuddering, shivering, seizing in those arms. Both light and darkness obscured my vision, a grayscale mayhem in my eyes. There were gasps for breath belonging to a drowning man and keening like that of a dying animal. Was it me making those ? I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I couldn't remember my name. All I knew for sure was that these arms were holding me to the earth, keeping me safe from the oblivion threatening to overtake my entire being.

The sound of someone spitting.

A voice like a dream.

"C'mon brat, don't make this shit a waste of my time."

And then the world was nothing.

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><p><strong>AN: **As you can see, this is a little different than my usual stuff. ^.^ I actually used to write in first person all the time but I switched when I started writing yaoi because my first person is incredibly effeminate, plus writing this way is a much more conscious effort than a limited or omniscient third person perspective. Eh, I'm still experimenting with my style and this variation of it is heavily inspired by the musical stylings of Scarling and The Birthday Massacre, and one of my very favorite authors, Francesca Lia Block.

But anywayyyyy, I hope you all liked it. You in particular, ebjeebies! I hope you have a wonderful birthday! To all else I wish a very happy holiday season. :)

By the way, please don't kill me for starting another new fic. I really will be updating more often come the new year since I'll be on break until late January and I'm only taking two classes the spring semester. :3

More to come soon...


	2. Zu Viele Füchse Für Euch Hänsel

**Moonshine**

_**Zu Viele Füchse Für Euch Hänsel**_

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><p><em>In you I feel so dirty, in you I crash cars<em>

_In you I feel so pretty, in you I taste God_

_We must never be apart_

_~ Ava Adore - Smashing Pumpkins_

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><p>It was a second or two, perhaps three, before I knew I was dreaming.<p>

My dreams always had the same star.

The sun.

Warmth. Light. A tangerine dream of ice cream kisses in summer heat, sticky and sweet, wet sweat, pearls wrapped around delicate throats, white angel feathers, coral lipstick on mermaid mouths, peach blossoms, golden butterfly wings, candy necklaces, the glitter of dawn.

And then it would vanish into dark smoke.

I would wake up.

The eternal night would greet me. Deceptively peaceful and empty.

My heart was a funeral home.

Everyone I had ever loved was dead.

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><p>My eyes opened to see the familiar, never-ending moonbeam across my pillow.<p>

Pillow?

I didn't have a pillow. I slept on wooden floors of abandoned apartment buildings.

Not in soft, normal beds like this one.

The night before flooded my brain, the eye of a hurricane storming through my mind. I remembered the Beasts, the bite, the fire in my veins and most of all; those blue eyes sparkling like holiday lights.

Had I even seen real eyes? Perhaps they'd been a hallucination.

There was a slow burning where I had been bitten, dull and aching. My hand reached for it, fingertips brushing over a layer of soft gauze. I tried to touch with the other, but my arm was trapped. Looking down, I saw it had been wrapped up into a makeshift sling.

I felt my heart beat like a Cherokee drum, hard and fast.

Where was I? What had happened?

I hated being in the dark.

"You awake, brat?"

The dream voice. It was there. It was real.

My eyes cornered to the origin and my inner drum stopped beating its rhythm. There was a silence inside of me, a stillness. I'd turned to stone.

Memories of the sun now seemed dusty and stale compared to _him_.

He was maddeningly lovely. Beauty incarnate. Immortally, inhumanly, impurely divine. The sin Lust wearing a cloak of angel skin. A water god, perhaps, with that delphinium summer blue hair mussed with a kind of uncaring perfection and fairytale features. And those _eyes_. They were a bouquet of hyacinth and wild indigo, the depths of the ocean after a ravishing storm of lightning and thunder, hardened and glittering like blood diamonds.

I didn't answer him and he frowned. What was the question, again?

I decided to speak.

My voice was coarse and rough, Mother Toad's croak. I hadn't used it in a long while.

"Why am I here?"

He smirked, a bemused twisting of rose lips.

"Good question," he said. Then he sighed.

From behind his back, he produced a mug. He handed it to me. I stared at its contents; a brandy, amber liquid.

"For the pain. It's the only thing we've got around here."

My brows pulled together. _We_?

"What is it?"

"Moonshine," he said.

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><p>Alcohol is a funny thing. A bottle of contradictions. It will make you feel two opposites at once, dead and alive, everything and nothing.<p>

I didn't feel anything.

The pain was still there.

But so was he.

It was a few long minutes, lethally quiet ones, before I found my courage.

"Why didn't I change?" I said.

"Don't you remember?" he said, hints of incredulity in his music voice. "I sucked the venom out."

Onto him I turned wide eyes.

That was when I saw it.

In his azure gaze, the one I so admired, there was a wild swirling carnality. It was_ so_ close to what raged in the Beasts' eyes, but... it was a controlled chaos. And in his smirk, I caught sight of two frightening fangs made of ivory.

"What are you?"

He sighed and shook his beautiful head.

"You ask too many questions, brat."

Walking closer, he sat on the bed inches from my legs. I saw a bandolier on his chest, full of gold-tipped bullets. There were guns strapped to his denim-covered thighs. Bowie hunting knives hung from his belt.

Having him so close was uncomfortable and amazing.

"You done with that?" He gestured towards the mug in my hand. I nodded and he swiped from my grip, knocking back a few gulps. Afterwards, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Shit tastes terrible."

I couldn't agree more.

A minute.

Two.

"What's your name?" he said.

I opened my mouth to silence. It was a moment before I remembered it. No one had said it in a long time.

"Ichigo," I said.

"Cute."

I scowled up at him. He chuckled.

"What's yours, then?"

"Grimmjow."

"Weird."

He laughed, barking and loud. It was wonderful.

I had forgotten what it was like to talk to another living, breathing being. One not consumed by animalistic dementia.

It was nice.

"You really are a little bitch, aren't you?" Grimmjow said before leaning over me. "I like that."

The face I made he must have liked too because he laughed again. My chest ached at the sound.

How had I missed my own loneliness?

"Come on and get up, then," Grimmjow said.

"Why?"

"Again with the questions." He grinned like a wolf. A baring of tiger teeth. "Just get up, the others want to meet you."

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><p><em>Love drug, I'm not in love,<em>

_It's all, all, all sex, apathy,_

_**Oh, I would kill anyone for you.**_

_~ Like a Killer - Scarling_

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><p><strong>AN: **I hope you don't mind these short as hell chapters. I just think they fit, stylistically. Plus, I think I might just write this whole story out in a very short period of time _and _it gives all of you a little something to munch on while I work on the much, much longer chapters of my other fics.

You may be able to see from this chapter alone, I really like flowers. :3

_I believe when translated from German the title reads "Too many foxes for you, Hansel." But I know nothing of the language so apologies if I screwed it up. _


	3. Say Hello to My Little Friend

**Moonshine**

_**Say Hello to My Little Friend**_

...

_dead men working a sinner, a saint_

_mixing up a pail of paint_

_painted the house black as night_

_when the sun came up the house was white_

_~ Color Me Once - Violent Femmes_

...

The Others were like him.

Their eyes - they were like glow in the dark bullet holes. Bright with malice but heavy with despair.

They weren't human. They weren't beast. They were something else.

I forgot words, speech, language. All of it.

I stared at them.

I didn't believe it.

"Everybody, this here is Ichigo," Grimmjow said. "Play nice."

Their stares felt like ice. I could feel it digging cold daggers underneath my flesh. It felt terrible. It felt wonderful.

It _felt. _

What strange things emotions are.

What strange things humans are.

The first girl - woman, whatever - held my gaze at last. She had eyes like discs of Egyptian gold, lke the forbidden treasure in a Pharaoh's tomb. How bizarrely pretty.

"I always do, Grimm," she purred. Like a cat but not. Maybe like a cat on steroids. A god awful, beastly thing. She looked like she wanted to eat me. Maybe would let her.

But probably not.

"I'm Yoruichi, but you can call me Yor," she said to me. I liked the sound of her voice. It was capable, confident, seductive even, but it was soothing. It had a maternal sweetness I couldn't get over.

She held her hand out to me.

I stared at it.

I looked to Grimmjow. Just one second.

Then I shook her hand with my good one. It was smooth, like how a woman's skin should be.

She nearly took my whole arm off.

But then she let go. Stepped back for another to approach me.

This one I didn't like.

He had scars on his face from the Beasts. They were clean and even and perfect.

Movie magic scars.

That's what they were.

His eyes were like charcoals with the fire burning from within, like when the ashes start to crumble away around the edges.

Does that make sense?

Of course it doesn't.

Then again, nothing ever does.

"Shuhei," he said. It was his name. His voice was too quiet, too even, like a wolf's paw on snow.

I hated the snow.

I tried to smile.

I think I looked like I was in pain.

I wondered if the number sixty-nine tattooed on his left cheek was funny.

It wasn't.

He shook my hand then rejoined the others on their throne made out of a black leather sofa with the stuffing spilling in some odd tears here and there. A morbid sight for all living room furniture items, I'm sure.

Maybe it was from Ikea.

A blond scarecrow with a slinky grin greeted me next. His smile knew something I didn't.

He had a butterfly knife in his hands, a sharp, lethal, small thing. He flicked it back and forth between his slender fingers. The light from the oil lamp in the corner danced on the blade . It was really more like a firefly.

I had always loved mom used to help me catch them in the summer. Little pieces of sunlight trapped in a jar.

"M'name's Shinji Hirako. Glad to see one of ya are still out there," he said. "That's good. A little hope is always good, y'know?"

He flashed the knife before my face.

That was when I saw his eyes, in the reflection of the glinting cloud silver lining of his knife.

They were brown and boring, like mine but not. Not at all.

They were the color of brandy right as it's being poured into a snifter.

Catching light and blades just like his knife.

"Yeah," I said.

"A lotta hope," he drawled, wide grin swan diving into a frown. "That's a different story. It's bad - poisons the soul. It's like the apple the Queen gave to Snow White-"

I remembered my mom telling me that story when I was five or six - a little thing who was adorable to believe in such magic. Not an adult who was insane for believing the same thing.

A ripe, luscious, blood red apple. Bitten. Maggots and black ooze. Sleeping death.

"- it looks nice on the outside, so delicious. It's a fate worse than death ," Shinji said casually. "You see what I'm saying?"

"I think so."

"Good. Then don't fuck it up."

Then he was gone, sitting on the couch.

I didn't know what he meant.

I knew hope, though.

Today, I found hope.

Blue-eyed, smart-mouthed, sexy hope.

"Don't listen to him, sweetie. He always speaks in rhymes and riddles ," a clear, feminine called out to me, pulling me free from the mind fog words had cast upon me like a magician's trick.

She was the last of the group, a busty bombshell with hair colored like sea-foam green nail polish and legs longer than the Mississippi. Her eyes were a stunning verdigris, like stones stolen from the necklace of Mother Earth herself. They had little jagged veins of metallic brass that pumped molten bronze like some sort of steampunk clockwork.

Gorgeous.

"My name's Nelliel," she said.

I nodded.

Turned back to Grimmjow.

A sigh.

I'd almost forgotten he was beautiful.

He winked at me.

My heart thudded and beat like a dubstep song right after they drop the bass.

He was a summer thunderstorm incarnate. All crackle and boom and powerful. A force of nature. Of Destruction.

Amazing.

"Let's go to the playhouse and show Ichi here how we do things around here, yeah?"

His voice was sin.

I mentally made the sign of the cross over myself.

God help me.

I would fuck that man into eternal damnation.

But what beautiful blasphemy it would be.

There was a unanimous agreement to his suggestion.

"Fuck. A human, who would've thunk it?"

I don't remember who said that.

I was still looking at their eyes.

Their eyes.

They all hid someone.

But who?

I crossed my fingers behind my back.

I wished they could show me the sun.

...

_With your feet in the air and your head on the ground_

_Try this trick and spin it, yeah_

_Your head will collapse_

_But there's nothing in it_

_And you'll ask yourself_

_Where is my mind?_

_~ Where is My Mind by Pixies_

...

**A/N:** Ah, this is the perfect way to get my inspiration flowing again. Remember, this is kind of my version of writing poetry so the chapters will remain short. Thanks for reading! :)


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